Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-04-09
rhe Thing in a NUTSHELL.

The Thing In a Nuasneiis
It is simply impossible that the
seaport cities of this cast can tolerate
the schedule of freight rates just
adopted by the overland railroads.
Either the railroads must give way,
or the law. Certainly the people of
this coast will not submit to tariff
which is des structive to their interests
as long as they have available reme-
dies. If we are required to pay all
the way from $50 to 700 per cent.
more for transportation than we did
before this schedule went into effect,
We shah be forced to seek other
channels of communication. Those
at our command are threefold. If
the Pacific Mail Steamship Company
is in the combination, then independ-
ent stea mers will be chartered to ply
between Eastern ports and the 18TH
mus, and between Panama and our
ports. Then the Cape Horn route is
always at our service. Next, we have
the Canadian Pacific road, which is
unaffected by the Interstate Com
merce law, and bonded goods can be
shipped through to Port Moody,
whence they can be brought to Cali
fornia at moderate rates. These are
the available channels of transporta-
ton with which our own railroads will
have to compete if the present ruin
ous rates are intended as a perma-
nency. But our railroads will not
permit this diversion Of their over
land traffic to take place. Either the
law will recede before the tempest of
opposition now rising against it, or
the railroads will be compelled to
flatten their rates mid-terr;tory in
stead of raising them at both ends.
A communication in another column
says that the railroads are perverting
the intention of the trainers of the
law by raising the rates at the com
petitive termini instead of lowering
them in the interior. But we are not
dealing with the intention Of the
trainers; we are dealing with fact.
The law does not, and could not,
prescribe the policy the railroads
should adopt. Rates were made low
by the railroads at competitive points
before this law passed upon sound
business principle. They said them
selves that at Los Angeles, San Fran
cisco, etc., they had either to give
very low rates or lose their through
business because Of the advantages
which the ocean afforded those cities.
II that was true proposition then, it
is true one ;now, and consequently
it is ridiculous to suppose that rates |
which fly in the face of these natural
transportation advantages can last.
Hence the very first move our husi-
ness men should make to bring their |
merch andise from the East by the |
Isthmus, the Horn or the Canadian |
Pacific railroad, would be followed by |
. tumble in overland rates. The
roads cannot afford to lose the bulk
Of our custom. On the other hand,
can the commercial centres of the
United States afford to tolerate a law
which will in the end bring them to |
ruin by wiping out their wholesale
trade? This is what the Interstate
law means. If railroad
transportation is to be regulated by
the mile, then every little wayside
town in the country is to be built up
1t the expense Of the great cities.
Each country trader will at once be-
come his own jobber. There will be
no more mercantile business in the
sense in which we now consider mer-
camille business. Orders will go
to the factories instead of to
the mercantile houses in the great
cities, and there will be no interme-
diary source of supply. Are we pre-
pared for a revolution of this sweep
ing character And if we are the ques
lion is will it be a change for the
better ? 1t may be, in an Utopian sense,
. grand thing to do away with mid
dlemen altogether; but the question
is, can the country stand the sudden
shock OF wiping out, almost without a
notice, class that has
from the dawn Of civilization cut
most conspicuous figure in the worlds
progress? However this may be, we
ire satisfied that both the Interstate
law and the action of the
have la d before the people
# this State problem which they |
viii solve speedily against both.
rhey will not, as long as they have
eadv remedy at hand, permit their
and business to be ruined
y freight rates that are monument
lly exorbitant. l